


We Have No Need to Swim

by tmariea (OccasionalArtist)



Category: Tales of Zestiria
Genre: (the sormik is in mention only), Angst, M/M, Sea Monsters, Tainted Mikleo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-12-07 15:07:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11626113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OccasionalArtist/pseuds/tmariea
Summary: What if sea monsters are water seraphim who went down into the ocean and never came back up?  They sunk down to the depths to escape the pain of malevolence and grief, and there they fell anyways.  They lurk in the darkness, lithe and sinuous, with milky blind eyes and wavering points of bioluminescence, ready to consume anything that comes too close.There is no happy ending.





	We Have No Need to Swim

**Author's Note:**

> For Sormik Week Day 4 - Loss (even though it's a day late)

It is around year five hundred that the question comes to Mikleo – is there anything left to explore?  Somewhere along the way, he lost count of how many times he had crossed the continent.  He had documented every known ruin, and then gone back to document how they had changed with the deterioration of time.  He had published innumerable books and papers on the subject, reread and reworked them often enough for the words to lose their meaning.

What is one to do when the world loses that fantastic glimmer?  When the one thing that could bring back the light of discovery and novelty slumbers on, for ages unknown?

In the kinds of worries that strike late in the night, pulling sleep from his grasp, he wonders if even Sorey’s return can bring back his sense of wonder.

Other times, when those thoughts crept up the back of his spine, he would seek out Lailah or Edna.  Each were a comfort but in very different ways.  This time he doesn’t.  This time there is a restlessness in his feet that he hasn’t been able to quench for decades, though not for lack of trying, and so he packs a bag and heads out, on the hunt for even one last unseen corner of his world.

He keeps moving, through daylight and under the trail of stars.  The same trail of stars they had watched overhead one night in Lastonbell.  Mikleo had wanted to scream at Sorey for leaving, had wanted to kiss him and beg him to stay.  He hadn’t.  He had been so full of hope, then, full enough to drown out the worries.  He feels he’s done well at keeping hope, but even best efforts can be eroded with time.  He keeps moving; he doesn’t look at the night sky anymore.

He walks and walks until his toes meet the edge of the ocean tide, and looks across.  There is nothing but water as far as the eye can see.  And that is when Mikleo gets an idea.  What exists under the ocean, where no one has ever seen?  It is not as if he has ever had trouble breathing within his own element.  He leaves his pack on the shore, aside from a small notebook and some charcoal that he can use artes to protect from water damage, and takes his first steps into the surf.

It is beautiful in the depths of the ocean, like nothing Mikleo has ever experienced before.  It feels new.  The light is different in the way it shifts under the force of the waves above.  The creatures are different, in the schools of fish that come swimming up to him cautiously and curiously, only to dart away at the slightest movement.  He spends days carefully sketching them in his book, barely shifting aside from his hand.  The press of the water on his limbs feels like an embrace, and the way his hair drifts in the currents feels like gentle fingers on his scalp.  It’s been eons since he felt these things, and he is loath to give them up.

He doesn’t.

Mikleo leaves his spot near where he entered the water and begins to travel down the coast.  He is fascinated by the geography of the ocean floor, the way the water shapes the sediment, and the rocks.  Gentle waters create sloping sands which lead back up to the surface.  Where the waves are harsh, they crash against the rocks above.  There is the sound of their beat in his ears, murkier waters before his eyes, and plenty of rough ground to stumble on under his feet.  When it gets too bad, he swims instead.  Sometimes, cliffs drop sheer into the water, and if he goes far enough out, there’s a cliff under the ocean as well.  That drops off harshly and into darkness; Mikleo decides to leave that place be, for now.

He loves feeling the barest changes in pressure as the tides roll in and out.  He’s always had a faint sense for the moon, but here it is stronger than ever.  He can feel the way it shapes his environment, shapes the water.  The moon, he thinks, must be a water seraph.  Then, he laughs at himself for the fanciful notions.  That is the kind of image Sorey would have loved, he thinks, then notices the past tense and corrects himself.  Sorey will love that image, some day.

He jots a note in the back pages of his book, separate from his observations of the ocean floor, and then tamps down anything he might feel on the matter.

 

Mikleo hasn’t been keeping track of time well, but he thinks he has spent a few months under the water when he comes upon the ruin.  He can feel his heart soaring, in a way that it hasn’t in ages.  This is a new ruin, new history, new things to explore and build theories on.  It’s exactly what he had been missing before.  He wonders who lived there.  He wonders how this place came to be under the sea.

There is an open archway leading inside, and Mikleo walks through, after taking a moment to brush his hands along the frame.  Between the creatures that have made their home there, he can make out patterns.  They are long since worn down by the constant sway of the ocean, but he will have to come back later, to see what he can find.

Just inside the hall, it is dark.  Not much sun finds its way to the ocean floor anyway, and none inside this ruin.  Mikleo summons mana in his palm, calling on it to glow.  Once he has a sufficient ball, he sends it towards the ceiling, and then makes a second for himself to carry.  Even this doesn’t fully illuminate the space, although he gasps in delight at the what he can see.  The ceiling soars several stories high, and is decorated by delicate, beautiful vaulting.  In a way it reminds him of the Sanctuary in Ladylake, but there’s something slightly different, too.  He will have to swim up and examine them later.  For now, he heads towards the ground story walls, where his light catches on the curves of engravings and casts the dips into shadow.

Mikleo is examining the fresco he found - which is a fascinating mix of styles, parts harkening to Temperance of Avarost while others, strikingly, bear a resemblance to the art which arose during his own Age of Chaos despite the fact that it must be thousands of years old - when he feels a domain brush his own.  It’s the last thing he expected to find down here in the depths of the ocean.  He whirls to face the room, hair floating softly in the eddies caused by his sudden movement.  His eyes strain against the darkness, as the outline of a figure wavers across the vast space.  He summons his staff and holds it at the ready, waiting for the figure to approach.

It is a woman who comes into his light, moving in a way that glides more than she walks or swims, with tendrils of blue hair drifting around and in front of her face.  As they shift, he can see that the tips of her ears have turned to fins, and the pupils of her eyes are slits and milky with near-blindness.  She raises a hand in greeting, and there are blue webs between her clawed fingers, blue fins along her forearms, and the glint of scales visible through the patches in her deteriorating robes.

“Can you put out the light?  It’s too bright,” she says.  Her voice sounds scratchy, unused, even through the way the water distorts sound.  He suspects if it was not their element, they would not be able to understand each other at all.

“Ah, okay,” Mikleo says and lets the light above them shrink and fade.  He lets the one near him fade, but not go out, and keeps his staff at the ready; while the seraph might be acting calm, she looks as if she has been tainted.  “Who are you?”

“My name is Amelia.  Although, it has been a long time since I have had reason to say it.”

“I’m Mikleo,” he ventures, for the sake of politeness, and then wonders if a half-tained seraph would have any care for manners.  He nearly snorts at the strange thought, but holds it in.  For a moment more, the two of them look at each other, just as wary as before, before Mikleo asks the question burning in his mind, “How did you come to be here?”

Amelia blinks, and the fins on her arms twitch, as if she is anxious or unsure.  “We came here to escape the malevolence of the world above, when it became too much.”  She must have some sight left, despite her milky eyes, because her face twists and she laughs as Mikleo winces.  The laugh is a hollow, grinding thing, like waves against the rocks.  It is not pleasant, but even more than that, it is frightening; it contains no emotion at all.  Mikleo clutches his staff until his knuckles turn white, and wills himself to hold his ground and not take a step back.

“It didn’t work, as you can see,” she finally finishes, once her bout of strange laughter is done.

“The world above is much more pure now,” Mikleo blurts out.

She stares him down, without blinking this time, and then says, “That is a nice thought.  I am glad.  But it is not one for me.”

A moment of silence passes, and then another.  Amelia does not seem inclined to say more, or to move just yet.  Finally, Mikleo clears his throat and asks, “We?”

“There were more of us once.”

And he knows.  He knows exactly why there are no others here with her.  He asks anyway, “How?”

She laughs her awful, soulless laugh again and Mikleo forces himself not to cringe.  “How am I the only one left?”

That wasn’t what he had meant, but he is not willing to correct her.

Amelia shrugs.  “Some fall faster than others. Those who hold sorrow or darkness in their hearts, perhaps. I'm one of the lucky ones. Or maybe, I'm not.”

Suddenly Mikleo doesn’t want to talk to this woman anymore.  Standing in front of him is a fate that he has spent his life pushing back against, that Sorey had sacrificed himself to prevent.  And here it is still.  He feels the last five hundred years spent alone - and for what? - laying heavy on him.  He feels sick to his stomach.

She studies him for a moment more, eyes narrowing and ear fins twitching.  “Stay away from the depths,” she warns, and it sounds like mourning.  “Stay away from the older ones, the darker ones.  There is nothing left there.”  And then, Amelia turns and walks away, out of his light, and taking the feeling of her domain with her, wrapped tight around her shoulders like a cloak.

 

In the time that Mikleo spends scouring every inch of the entrance hall and the rooms nearby, he does not meet Amelia again.  It seems she is just as content to stay away as he is to have her gone.  Although, he does always keep the senses in his domain alert for any other surprises that might come along.

From time to time, schools of fish swim in and out.  These he likes, and always takes some time away from his study to coax them close and let them swim between his fingers and hair.  Their cool, smooth bodies and vibrant, tiny lives are grounding.  They move so fast, reminding him of the time passing in a way that he often forgets.  He tries to rack his brain for how long he has been under the water, and comes up short.

He doesn’t mind that as much as he thought he would.  He remembers the way time was starting to drag before he came down into the ocean, so he could do with a little bit of feeling like it’s flying by.

At any rate, the ruin is vast and there is much more to be explored.  By questing with his own domain, he believes that there are several upper stories and a basement, perhaps two, in this vast place.  Upper floors are the way to go, he thinks as he approaches a grand, soaring stairway and begins to ascend.  Superstition can’t help but tell him that there will be darker things, more things like Amelia, down below.

And yet, something in him is still not surprised when, several rooms into his grand exploration of the second floor, he finds a monstrous creature.  Or, really, it’s not so much that Mikleo finds the monster, than the monster finds him.  He is narrowly saved by the feeling in the water of the thing’s passing, and reflexes which make him bring his staff up to block as it rams into him.

This thing is all teeth, rows and rows of them, and tiny, milky eyes, and wicked-sharp looking spines.  For half of a panicked second, he remembers a frightening, hollow laugh, but then he realizes this thing is small, and for all its fierce appearance, not very powerful.  Mikleo gathers the water before him, chills it hard and fast enough that it freezes despite the salt in the water, and waits for the monster to attack again.

It circles for a moment before charging again, and runs head-first into Mikleo’s ice spear.  It shakes itself, shrieks in a way that makes the water all around him shudder, and then turns tail to slink off.

Mikleo is careful, reaching forward with all of the senses at his disposal before he tries to enter the room the monster came from, again.  It seems to be empty.  He guides one of his lights inside, and steps up to the doorway before he freezes.  Inside, there is a dark purple miasma slowly pulsing and twisting in its own mindless hunger.  There are eons of hurt here, little eddies and pockets of it that drift about on the currents like dark jellyfish.  They had always known they needed to purify the land, but who would ever think to purify the sea?

His heart thumps madly, painfully in his chest. There has been so much work done, to purify the land.  And yet, this reminds him of nothing so much as the cities of Glennwood when he and Sorey first set out from Elysia centuries ago.  And this is just one room, in one ruin, in the vast ocean.  How much of the water is infused with malevolence, how much of it has he touched?  If things are still like this here, how in the world will Sorey ever cleanse enough of the world to wake?

That is not a thought to be thinking.  Instead, he swirls the water in the room into a cyclone to chase away the patches of malevolence.  It goes streaming past him as he directs it away.  Inside, there are more fascinating carvings, similar to the ones in the grand hall below.  Even without looking closely, he has a thrill up his spine that these ones might help him unlock answers.

He decides, even though there is malevolence here, that he will stay.

 

Mikleo hasn’t written in his notebook as much as he once has.  The beginning, when he flips through, is packed full of sketches of fish and notes in a tiny exacting hand on comparisons of art and architecture between historical periods and the periods in which he has lived.  The notes are still tiny and exacting in the later half, but it certainly took him several times the amount of time that it did to fill the front, especially since he’s collected plenty enough on the art style here to put together some answers.  When he reaches the last page, he finds a note, to tell Sorey that he once had the silly notion that the moon was a water seraph.  Until then, he hadn’t even remembered the thought.

Mikleo looks at the page for a moment, decides that he will not write anything more there, and shuts the book.  He slides it into the pouch on his belt, still wrapped in magical protections.  The thought that he should return to the surface for another is gone from his mind almost as fast as it came.  Besides, it’s become hard to write anymore with the webbing slowly creeping between his fingers.

 

There is a day, when he leans close to a section of wall, to examine an old trap.  It’s no longer a danger to him - the rope connecting the mechanism has long-since rotted away.  But it’s fascinating anyway.  As he looks, his eyes begin to hurt.  He rubs them, feeling his fingers skim along the tiny ridges forming underneath.  The ridges had concerned him once, but not anymore.  The touch does not help with his eyes, though.

He thinks that maybe he has been looking at fine detail too long, and that they need a rest.  He turns away from the wall only to come face to face with one of his glowing spheres.  The light is harsh on his hurting eyes this close.  He’s always kept two with him, one for up close and one to illuminate the wider spaces, so he thinks it might not be a bad thing to put one of them out for now, while he rests.  He lets it fade, and breathes a sigh of relief.

 

He has been practicing finer control of sensing his surroundings in the water.  There are things his eyes miss these days; probably his eyes have always missed things, but the water - it’s in everything.  It misses nothing.

That is probably the reason he feels the creature in the water first, knows the shape of it to be like a man, before he ever senses the domain of a seraph.  He is shocked; the last time he felt something of the like was when he met Amelia again a few months - years? - ago.  Even then, she had hardly felt like a seraph anymore, and certainly nothing like this one, who is pure to the core, and in some way familiar.

He decides his curiosity is enough to venture up from the basement level where he has spent most of his time lately, back up the grand staircases and out to the hall, where this one waits.

As he makes his way through the series of halls and rooms, he feels something flash by his cheek.  It makes beautiful trails in the water with its passing.  It takes him a moment to realize it’s a fish, and he feels something strange in his chest when he can’t remember the last time he saw one.  He does remember, though, feeling them dart around him, and in and out of his fingers.  When the next one passes him by, he snatches it from his path, with the aid of the webbing on his fingers and a twist he makes in the water.  He feels it wriggle against his palm for a moment, the smooth, coolness of its scales.  He wonders what it might be like to eat it, but then he lets the fish go and continues on.

There in the entrance hall is the owner of the domain.  He senses it is a man, shorter than him but not by much, and sees with what failing eyesight he has left that the man is swathed in blue.  Although, it is hard to tell through the light.

“Mikleo,” the man says.

He blinks, tries to think when it was he last heard that name.  He tries to think of who this man is.  He looks up towards the ceiling, and remembers this man in a similar place once, another grand room with grand vaulting and a sweeping roof.  “Uno,” he says back.

“I was sent to look for you, by Lailah and the others.  Although, Edna claims no interest in this endeavor.”

“Ah,” he says, and his mind runs through a hundred bored expressions, more often than not hidden away a moment later by an umbrella.  He thinks he says, “that’s just like her,” but when he looks back at Uno, blinking against the lights the other seraph has brought with him, he can’t be sure.

“They want you to come home.”  His senses in the water tell him Uno’s mouth and eyes are twisted with some kind of emotion.

Before he can even truly feel the word on his tongue, he’s saying, “No.”

“Brother,” Uno says, “can you truly say that this is you speaking, and not the malevolence?  I know the things it will make you do.”

He wracks his brain, his memories of the world above.  Edna is easy, since Uno mentioned her, she is her teasing and snide comments, but also in the way her voice cracks when she is truly worried for someone she claims not to love.  Lailah, she is warmth, and bad jokes, and a teacher despite her sometimes childish ways.  Zaveid is an old, solid presence, for all he tries to hide it under all of the flirting.  The memories are warm, but his heart twists in his chest to think of missing them, to think of how they would see him now.  He clutches his elbows, feeling the scales there under his fingertips.

And then, and then there is the one who is not there.  Sorey.  He is ruins, and bright green eyes, and falling asleep together as children.  He is sparring together, and tickle fights, and the only person Mikleo has ever kissed.  He is books, and a heart that welcomes in all he meets, and he is sacrifice.  And he is gone.  For more years, more centuries, than he ever got to live.

He no longer trusts that Sorey will be coming back.

His heart twists again, and it’s worse this time.  There’s a name to it, too.  Loneliness, sorrow, despair.  All feelings that spawn malevolence; all feelings malevolence spawns.  It is a vicious cycle, he thinks, and it is not a new thought.  He has thought it many times over the years, but this is the first time that he adds, _what a cruel world_.  Perhaps it is better to stay down in the dark and the silence.  He can’t escape it now, oh no, but he would no longer have to see others suffer for it.  No one would have to suffer when he, too, succumbs.

Finally, he looks back to Uno, who has waited in silence for his answer.  “I am the one speaking,” he says, as clear and as strong as he can.

“It would be a shame to lose a good water seraph. And a good friend.  You won’t reconsider?”

“No.”  He waits, for Uno to say something else.  When there is only silence, he adds, “I’m tired, Uno.  Tired of waiting for something which will never come.”

There must have been something in his face, because Uno sighs, and nods.  “I have strict orders to bring you back, you know.  But if this is truly your choice, I will respect it.  Lailah will roast me alive when I come back empty handed.”

“I am sorry,” he says, and he does feel it.

He watches, as Uno turns to go.  A moment later, he calls, “Uno!” and reaches to his belt for his notebook.  It’s been eons since he’s thought of the thing, but hearing him speak about returning empty handed reminded him.  At least some part of him must have remembered, though, because his artes are still firmly in place to keep it safe from the water.  He holds it out when the other seraph turns back to him, feels a second set of artes wrap around it, and lets go of his own.  “Give this to him,” he says.

Uno nods, takes the book, and turns away again.

He stays to watch Uno leave.  This won’t be the last, he thinks.  Lailah will find another water seraph to come retrieve him, and the next perhaps won’t be willing to leave him in peace.

Perhaps it is time to move on.  He walks out of the ruin once he can no longer feel Uno’s domain.  The light outside is nearly blinding, and so he closes his eyes, puts out his own lightt, and uses the water to guide him.  Where to go, which will be dark and hidden?  There are further depths, down the cliff in the water.

As he glides through the towering gate, he stops for a moment to run his hands along the sides, to feel the patterns under his fingertips between the creatures clinging there.  He never got the chance to come back and examine them.  He thinks he should be disappointed by this, but instead he just feels empty.

Later, when he reaches the cliffs, he doesn’t bother to create a new light for himself.

 

Light is a thing he knows as glowing points of blue.  They adorn his body in swirling trails, occasionally flicking in and out of vision as his body undulates in the current.  Other creatures come to it.  They slink through the darkness, into his small light, with eyes blurred and senses dulled and he eats them all.

Which is why it is so strange when another creature comes that makes its own light.  It’s a small thing, although not as small as some, but its light is so bright as it floods his milky eyes.  They feel like they’re searing out of his skull.  He hasn’t seen anything this bright since the days of sunlight.  That is a word that the ancient parts of him know, that the rest of him no longer understands.

But this creature, this man, is sunlight.  The brightest, most wonderful and most painful thing he has ever known.

He freezes when the man reaches out to touch him.  Nothing has touched him like this in eons, with gentleness and no fear.  “Oh Mikleo, what has become of you?”  Sound does not carry right through water, but he hears anyway.

That word, that name.  He’s heard it before, perhaps in a dream.  In a dream of sunlight, and air and this man.  There is noise in his head now, beating on his skull.  There are words there, trying to fight their way out of a mind that no longer understands, a mouth that can no longer shape them.  His heart beats fast.  He can feel this man’s heartbeat in the vibrations of the water.  It is fast too, but familiar, and that hurts.  Everything is hurt and confusion.  He wants it to all be quiet and dark again.

Because if it is not quiet and dark, then he has to remember what he was, what he has become, and what could have been – what they could have been.

The man is still touching him.  He’s speaking again, and no, no, stop, no more words.  He cannot take more words – they claw at him, wrench out these feelings that he cannot bear.  But he hears them anyway, because the world is not kind or merciful, and the man says, “I have searched for you for so long.  Won’t you come home?”

And there is a wave of anger.  “I have no home.  You left!” screams the ancient part of him.  Tries to scream it through his mouth, but it comes out as a roar.  There is no sound in the water, but the vibrations shake the stones on the sides of his trench; they come crashing down.  The man doesn’t flee; he clutches closer.

That touch seems to burn, that light burns, those thoughts crashing through his mind burn him from the inside out.  The ancient parts of him are still screaming.  They are crying and wailing and trying to claw their way out of these scales and fins and this cloud of darkness.  Anguish and the most bittersweet joy rise up and crash over him like waves, and he’s going to be dragged under.  He just wants it all to stop.  He reaches forward, to impose silence and darkness and a stilling of his thoughts in the only way he can now.

Somewhere in the depths of the ocean, a light goes out.  It is unnoticed, but for the small flock of creatures that had begun to swim towards its alluring glow.  They turn back now, interest lost.  Beneath them, a creature settles back into the darkness and the solitude, and wills his thoughts to stop and his heart to turn to stone.


End file.
